Tyranny and Bliss
by HeavenBesideYou13
Summary: Being new parents is hard. Being new parents of twins is harder. [Modern AU, Tyzula RomCom Challenge, Tyzula/Maizai/Zutara/Sukka/Taang]
1. Chapter 1

This is a story for the Tyzula RomCom Challenge. It's for the prompt about Azula and Ty Lee mothering twins together. It starts in the first year of their life and will go on until they're eighteen, or maybe later, I'm loving this story idea so I'm not sure exactly how long I'll go on. It's going to update every weekend.

Ships: Tyzula, Maizai, Zutara, Sukka, Taang.

Warnings: Adult humor, some language and some slightly sexual content in the future.

* * *

 **TYRANNY AND BLISS**

* * *

 **BOOK ONE: YEAR ONE**

* * *

 **Chapter One**

 **.**

Azula fiercely smashes her fist through the glass of a hospital vending machine. Against her will, Zuko grabs her by the waist and pulls her away from it, but not before she lands another satisfying kick.

She stands in a room that smells of antiseptic littered with dated Sports Illustrated magazines, ugly salmon pink themed paintings and endless plastic chairs. Now, Azula stands stuck in Zuko's strong arms as she grinds her teeth and worries endlessly about her two daughters.

Mai slowly lowers her magazine and dryly says, "Do you now see why Ty Lee didn't want you in the delivery room?"

Azula snarls at her, "I'm concerned about my babies! This is perfectly normal!"

"This is honestly not normal," Katara says, glancing up from her phone and cocking an eyebrow, "I've seen fathers freak out, but I can't say I've ever seen someone smash a chair and a vending machine. And I work here."

"Why is she here? Who gave her the right to be here?" Azula shrieks, trying to escape Zuko's grasp again. "I did not give her the right to be here!"

Katara rolls her eyes. "Zuko made me trade shifts with my friend to come."

Azula glances around at the waiting room. In attendance: her best friend who happens to be her stepmother due to an unplanned teen pregnancy and the five-year-old child beside her, her brother and his horrible wife who married him at a courthouse without inviting her, her beloved father, Ty Lee's terrible best friend Suki, Suki's awful husband slash my co-sibling-in-law Sokka sleeping beneath a blanket, a goody-two-shoes boy with tattoos that could never make him look tough with his nose in a book along with his blind girlfriend whose sharp tongue tonight is silenced by spiked coffee. It is a delightful crowd here for the birth of Azula's children.

"What are you naming them?" Suki asks with a yawn.

"Do I have to answer her?" Azula asks, sneering at Ty Lee's best friend and attempting to wriggle out of Zuko's arms. Suki smiles and waves back at the woman who tortured her in middle and high school.

"Tyranny and Bliss," Zuko replies in lieu of his sister, a smile creeping onto his face. "They each got to name one. Azula chose Tyranny and Ty Lee chose Bliss."

Toph asks through her cup, "Do you want your kids to hate you? I mean, Tyranny, she's gonna be a career criminal which is kinda cool but not what most people aim for with their kids, and Bliss will be a failed beauty queen who becomes either a stripper or barista. I don't know which of those two jobs is more embarrassing."

"Those are really bad names," Suki superfluously adds.

Azula snarls, "No one asked you, and no one asked you to be here either."

Suki retorts, "Ty Lee asked me to be here."

Ozai stands up, pushing his youngest daughter Alice onto his much-younger wife's lap, and everyone falls silent with wide eyes like little kids caught fighting by their big bad dad.

"I see I have to intervene. Princess, we should take a walk," he says, and then mutters under his breath, "Since I am the only father here somehow. My family disappoints me."

He beckons, Zuko releases his sister and Azula follows him down the hideous hospital hallway. She wants her inheritance, after all, and so she will do whatever he says.

"I want those babies to come out," Azula says as she walks. Ozai seems prepared to take her down if she breaks anything else. "I have never been helpless before. Never. And I am."

Ozai never has been good at emotional conversations. Neither has Azula.

And, so, he says, "Princess, how would you like to be my company president?"

It is mostly all of what Azula always wanted. Once he dies, she expects to be a CEO, which is better, but she will take second best for the next forty years or so. Then again, Azula despises pity.

"I don't want you to give me this job just because I decided to have kids," she says strongly, touching her knuckle to her rosy lips.

"Fine. We will have an interview if you care so much," he says, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. "Why do you think you are right for this position?"

Azula graciously replies, "Because I am a people person and look great in a blazer."

"The job is yours," says Ozai in a voice that Azula would never question. "Enjoy. I was going to give it to you anyway. It isn't as if I have better options."

"I do love unofficial monarchies in business."

"Yes. And then Tyranny can have it after you."

"Are you already picking favorite grandchildren?"

"Of course I am." Ozai smirks.

"What if you like Bliss better?"

"Tyranny is yours and Bliss is Ty Lee's. I thought you two already worked that out. I mean, Zuko was supposed to be mine but he was disappointing so your mother and I had you. You just have the privilege of getting your children simultaneously."

Azula decides not to argue. Being a company president is completely worth traumatizing her children and angering her beloved wife. God willing, she shall take after her father and her family will be too afraid to protest her crooked ways.

"Of course, Tyranny will never disappoint you," says Azula, feeling somewhat like a woman pledging a witch her firstborn child in exchange for a glamorous dream career.

Mai interrupts Azula and Ozai by sighing and dryly announcing, "Your babies are born or something. If you care."

Azula dashes past her without so much as a thank you and joins her wife and her wife's sister and mother as quickly as she can. She walks in, slams the door behind her, and sees the two most beautiful babies who were ever born. Ever.

"I need to hold them. One at a time, I guess." Azula orders. Ty Lee's sister complies, since no one else does a thing, and hands the first one to Azula.

When she looks at those wide golden eyes, she knows what love feels like for the first time. Or so she tells people when she recounts the story; it has a poetic ring to it, true or not.

Azula declares, "This one is Tyranny," and as she gestures at the one in Ty Lee's arms, "and that one is Bliss."

Ty Lee smiles. She had it the other way around, but her daughters were identical and no one would know the difference.

"We're a perfect family," Ty Lee gushes, holding Bliss tighter to her chest.

 **.**

In the lovely hospital room far nicer than anywhere else in the ugly medical building, Azula lies on the bed beside a sleeping Ty Lee, while the family crowds everyone to an uncomfortable level. Tyranny rests with Azula, who thinks she might never set down her daughter. Alice—Azula's little sister—holds Bliss in her arms. Ty Lee permitted the five-year-old to hold one baby, but Azula will never put Tyranny in harm's way.

"Mai is really holding her," says Ty Lee. "Mai won't drop her first grandchildren."

"Jesus, I'm twenty-five. I can't have grandchildren," says Mai, feeling faint but hiding it well.

Toph says with a wide, mocking smile, "Didn't you ever hear the famous saying that gold diggers have grandbabies young?"

Mai does not care enough to argue. She just adjusts Alice's arms to make sure she does not drop Bliss and kill the mildly happy mood this family is in for once. Somehow, this is the least violent gathering they ever have had.

Katara walks in and sets a stuffed penguin beside the sink. "So, you're a family now," she says. "A little family with two cute kids and a stay-at-home mom and a cute house in a bourgeois neighborhood with a literal white picket fence and a business executive for a breadwinner. Do you need me to buy you a golden retriever?"

Azula says coolly, "I hate dogs. No dogs."

"Your kid will ask for one," says Sokka, completely uninvited to speak to Azula. "They'll ask for one and ask for one and ask for one until you finally give up. Me and Katara did that. Our gran-gran hated dogs but we ended up with four."

Ty Lee chirps with her eyes still closed, "Like when the cat yowls until we cave in and turn the sink on for her."

"Kids yowl way worse than cats," remarks Mai. "It's torture, and you think it'll end, and the doctors say it'll end, and the books say it'll end, but it never ends. Never."

Azula shows fear for the first time in her life.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

 **.**

Azula and Ty Lee take their babies home to a beautiful nursery, Tyranny in Azula's arms and Bliss in Ty Lee's. Mai, Ozai and Alice accompany them in order to help with the twins the two women are certainly not prepared to handle. Only the small Alice is happy about the situation.

"I wish you had a mother, so I wouldn't have to do this," says Ozai.

Azula shoots back, "I have Mai."

"A _real_ mother," coolly corrects Ozai.

Azula does not have a response. She just sets her daughter down and prepares to have time to herself. But the exact second Azula releases Tyranny, the baby begins to cry, which makes Bliss start to cry, which makes Azula walk out of the room as fast as possible.

"She already left you," says Mai. "I knew it would happen."

"She didn't leave me, Mai," snaps Ty Lee, setting Bliss in the arms of her mother-in-law slash best childhood friend and running after her beautiful bride.

"At least not yet," says Azula, leaning over the banister on the stairs. "Where did we put that celebratory wine your awful friend gave us?"

"When did you even gain an interest in escapism?" Ty Lee asks, startled.

"When I became a mother of two miniature banshees. Goodnight, Ty Lee and good luck with the children you wanted so much."

Azula storms down the terra-cotta stairs.

"Doesn't she keep medication for this kind of stress?" Mai means it as a joke, but it probably is very true. The woman is insane.

Ty Lee thoughtfully says, "She shouldn't mix that with alcohol. Mai tell her that she shouldn't mix that with alcohol."

"Why can't you?" Mai asks, although she already knows. Ty Lee fears Azula.

"Because I'm scared to. You don't care if she hates you or not. My life would end if she hated me," Ty Lee whispers.

Mai rolls her eyes and follows Azula down the grand staircase.

 **.**

An hour of intermittent crying later, Azula, Mai, Ozai and Ty Lee sit in the living room with the television muted. Alice somehow (allegedly) sleeps (but probably is awake on her iPad). Tyranny and Bliss still refuse to be released from their mothers' arms.

"I have to set her down," at last says Azula, but once she starts she picks Tyranny up again. "What do we do? Wake up my parents."

"I…" Ty Lee bites her lower lip. "I really want to impress them with our parenting. We're so much better at it than them probably don't you think my love?"

"Fine. We need to think of a solution that lets us sleep."

Ty Lee suggests a few that get crushed like bugs under a boot.

She finally, exasperatedly, screeches at her bride, "Azula, please stop pacing; your aura is making me dizzy."

Mai looks up and says, "Yeah, Azula, your aura is all blurry."

"I do not need your sarcasm," Azula hisses through bared teeth.

"If you want my help, you get my sarcasm," she says.

Azula tries to set Tyranny down again, which makes her scream and cry, which makes Bliss scream and cry, which makes Ty Lee tug at her hair and start to cry too.

Azula demands of Mai, "How did you do this as a teenager?"

Ozai responds in place of his hot young trophy wife, "Stop calling her that. She was nineteen and therefore a legal adult."

"She still had braces," Azula snaps, rolling her eyes dramatically.

Mai, entertained by the debacle, says, "Thank God I don't smile or those would be some horrible wedding photos."

"She got those after I started sleeping with her," Ozai growls and the look in his eyes never fails to scare targets of his remarks into submission.

Azula is far from immune.

"I apologize, father," says Azula, feigning earnestness. "I am just very, very tired and therefore impatient and envious of your parenting skills. Please take care of my children for me."

Ty Lee squeezes her eyes shut to avoid rolling them.

"I already did that for your mother. I'm not doing it for you," Ozai says in his terrifying-tone.

"Did she say that when she abandoned us?" Azula asks genuinely.

"No, but it was implied, or she would've taken Zuko with her," Ozai says, waving his hand.

"I could take Bliss if we ever broke up, and then they could meet at summer camp and get us back together with adorable twin hijinks," Ty Lee says with gleaming, thrilled eyes, as if that is actually a good idea.

"Certain cultures kill twins immediately," Mai states. "But if we kill them they might haunt us like _The Shining_ and I…"

Mai cannot decide if that would be awesome or terrible.

"I am against infanticide," says Azula, hiding the fact that she secretly considers it every four minutes when Tyranny cries. "Especially of my own children. Especially of Tyranny."

Mai dryly comments, "The funny thing is that Bliss will grow up to be just like you."

"As irony?" Azula asks quizzically.

Mai smartly replies, "No, her decisions will all be based on how much she hates her mother and sibling," which Azula scoffs at.

"I also love Bliss dearly," says Azula regally with a smug twist of her lips. "I just think that we'll be more effective at parenting if we split up."

Mai replies, "And more effective at catching crooked realtors in masks."

"Shut up, Mai. You should go to bed early," Azula snaps, certain she would be choking her out if she did not have a sleeping baby in her arms.

"I won't disagree with that idea." She gets up, but Ty Lee grabs her by the wrist and pulls her back down at a passionate velocity.

"Do _not_ leave me," Ty Lee whispers, her voice cracking, and the tears in her eyes convince Mai to begrudgingly stay and endure the evening.

Ozai suggests, "When you were a baby, you cried when you were cold, so we kept you next to a fire or a radiator or under blankets."

"How did I survive to adulthood?" Azula asks, eyes wide. No one told her that story before, not even Zuko. He would lord that over her if he knew.

Ozai offhandedly replies, "Babies are hardier than you think," as if he did not just reveal devastating information.

Ty Lee _should_ come to Azula's aid like a decent wife, but she nods and says, "Our fireplace is behind glass. I don't even think the fire in it is real."

"I am not setting my child on fire," Azula says, giving Ty Lee a glare that shuts her up.

Nervously laughing after crossing her wife, Ty Lee suggests hopefully and not jokingly enough, "We could put them in a basket at the mall like kittens and see if anyone adopts them."

Azula just slumps against the sofa with Tyranny in her arms.

It will be a long night.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

 **.**

"Why do I look so tired?" Azula snarls at her darling secretary. "Because my life is worse than anyone's on the planet and yes I'm including starving children so don't ask!"

She sips her mocha with cinnamon and cayenne pepper as she stands in the cold office. Her secretary slowly sits down and smiles in response, eyes round from terror.

"I understand, ma'am," her secretary says, continuing to smile. She hopes Azula will not have a total breakdown and do something insane like fire her out of nowhere.

"You could _never_ understand what it is like to have two twin babies. _Never_. Even if you had two twins, you would not be able to comprehend how little sleep I get," Azula growls. Her secretary just keeps smiling.

 _Just keep smiling, just keep smiling, just keep smiling._

Azula clicks away into her office.

 **.**

At home, in front of Mai, Ty Lee takes a sip from a souvenir shot glass.

"Oh, God!" she screams, coughing and gagging. "Why would anyone suggest I drink this? Is it like some kinda horrible prank?"

She throws the shot glass of apple cider vinegar at the wall.

Mai asks, "Why did you drink vinegar?"

Ty Lee sighs. She has no idea why she is beset on all sides by idiots.

"Because it's supposed to invigorate me and help me lose baby weight. Duh," she says, trying to keep positive but losing her optimism fast. Every time Bliss or Tyranny cries, she loses a little more of her patience and happiness.

"I…" Mai does not even know where to begin with those health claims. "I don't think any of that is remotely true."

"How do you know? The internet says it's true and you're not smarter than the internet," Ty Lee screams. She bursts into tears and sits down at the kitchen counter.

"You look like you want to be alone," says Mai.

"I want to be _comforted_ ," Ty Lee ekes out between sobs.

"No. No, you look like you want to be alone." Mai walks away, leaving Ty Lee to her tears.

Ty Lee smashes her head down on the table.

Tyranny and Bliss both start to cry at the top of their small lungs.

 **.**

At work, Zuko goes to visit his sister. He never does that, despite working in the same building as her. They generally try to avoid her except during vital meetings. He holds coffee in one hand and Azula snatches it from him before he can even start talking.

"How are you doing? How are Tyranny and Bliss?" he asks politely. It makes her want to rip his eyebrows from his skull.

"You will leave. You will stop asking questions. You will stop looking so superior before I am forced to at last take vital steps towards my satisfying revenge on you," Azula growls through the Starbucks cup.

"H-how exactly do you plan to get revenge on me?" asks Zuko, knitting his brow.

Azula glares at her brother, directly into his eyes. "First, I hack your e-mails. Then I create several fake social media accounts to catfish losers and drive a wedge between you and everything you love. _Then_ I take out credit cards in your name and go on an identity theft rampage to receive my vengeance and lingerie I would never buy under my own name."

"How long have you been planning that?" Zuko asks, not at all surprised, but still kind of impressed by the detail and devastation of her scheme.

"A few years," answers Azula in total honesty. "It eventually will happen but I am obviously too tired now that I am a mother."

"I look forward to it," says Zuko sarcastically. He leans against the wall, already overstaying his welcome. Azula thinks she might murder him instead of her beautiful and eloquent revenge plot. "Do you need any help with your kids?"

"Why are you offering? You want an opportunity to be smug?" Azula asks.

"Not necessarily. I just have literally never seen you this messed up," Zuko comments, having expected a snide response to his offer. He hoped for one, actually, because he had no plans to actually follow through on helping her. It was not the nature of their relationship to care at all about each other. "Somehow your eyes are both sunken and puffy."

"Get out of my office," Azula shouts, pointing viciously at the door.

He slinks out without another word.

Talking to Azula is far, far from fun.


End file.
